So, we were pretty excited here in Houston when we found out about four days ago that it would be snowing here in Houston. Snow in and around the Gulf of Mexico is like some sort of miracle. The whole phrase, ‘when hell freezes over’ really means something to us when it gets below 60 degrees. When they forecast snow, we start wondering if we should find a way to rework that phrase. None-the-less, when I woke up this morning I was excited like it was Christmas morning. I was excited for myself because I miss my, ‘I live close to Tahoe’ days and I was excited for Catherine because she has never seen snow fall. She has only seen a bit of snow that was built up on a slide when we made a trip out to Nebraska earlier this year. I couldn’t wait to see what her reaction would be. John was not too excited because he had to work and would miss out on all of the fun. Of course, with Houston shutting everything down because of a little bit of snow, including the airports, I think John was getting his hopes up that something exciting would happen.
After breakfast as we headed into the living room, I saw big, huge, fluffy flakes coming down pretty heavily. The forecast wasn’t predicting snow until the afternoon so I about tripped all over the animals and Catherine trying to get ourselves dressed and out the door to play with the stuff. I left Catherine in her footed pajamas, shoved her into some sweats, threw a jacket on her, dropped her into her too big Barbie boots, and shoved some of her socks onto her hands (who needs gloves in Houston except for me?) and we made a run for the door. She looked a little shabby and so did I, but at least she looks cute being shabby. Luckily for the sake of future photos and video I dressed her up a bit for our next excursions in the snow. Anyhow, she didn’t know what to do at first but Chief remembered snow from 7 or 8 years ago and made a beeline for the falling fluff. She was running and biting at it, acting like a puppy and not the 13 year old dog that she is. I think that all of her horsing around put Catherine at ease because she started creeping out of the house and investigating what the foreign stuff was all about. She quickly got the hang of it and started trying to bite at it like Chief, touching it with her sock hands, and saying she wanted to eat it off the grass (what??). She thoroughly enjoyed herself and DID NOT want to go back inside. However, after about 15 minutes I made a motion that we head back inside and majority wins (I was counting poor Shadow who would have none of it and the two cats who don’t like the cold or wet). You see, I have acclimated to the hellish, hot weather down here and anything below an ambient 75 degrees makes me shiver uncontrollably. My parents who still live in the San Fran. Bay Area are a bit embarrassed about this change in me (just kidding…okay not really). Luckily for Catherine we managed to throw on coats and boots like it was a fire department bunker gear timing drill at least 4 times to make a mad dash for the snow outside. She loved every bit of it…and so did I.
Meanwhile, over at the airport, this was the scene that John looked at all day:
De-icing a plane in Houston?? Those poor people in the buckets. They were either excited about finally getting to operate the de-icing gear or they thought it was a pretty lame day because it was darn cold outside.
